Author: Neil Thomas | Page 3 | Science and Culture Today

^{Type
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Author
Neil Thomas

Date
March 13, 2024

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Asia, atheism, Charles Lyell, Christianity, Daniel Dennett, E Conchis Omnia, Enlightenment, Erasmus Darwin, First Cause, fundamentalism, Garden of Eden, God Hypothesis, Higher Criticism, Lamarckian theory, literalism, Louis Agassiz, Nick Spencer, Noah’s Ark, Noah’s Flood, On the Origin of Species, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pierre-Simon Laplace, quantum weirdness, Richard Dawkins, Richard Swinburne, The Necessity of Atheism, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Uncertainty Principle, Victorian England, William James, William Lane Craig}

Shelley, Darwin, and the 19th-Century God Debate

_{Neil Thomas
March 13, 2024

Evolution, Faith & Science

19}

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley threw down the gauntlet for what was effectively to become the great Victorian dispute about religious faith. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
February 19, 2024

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, agnostics, biologists, cosmologists, creationists, Darwin’s Bluff, evidence, evolution, evolutionary mechanisms, hagiography, linguists, Luther College, nature, religion, Robert Shedinger, scientific evidence, The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms}

In Darwin’s Bluff, Robert Shedinger Rightly Forgoes the Hagiographic Tradition

_{Neil Thomas
February 19, 2024

Evolution, Faith & Science

1}

The present reader, in company with a host of agnostic biologists and cosmologists, simply finds in Darwin a complete dearth of convincing scientific evidence. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
February 12, 2024

Categories
Biology
Chemistry
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, A. N. Wilson, abiogenesis, Anaximander, Anaximenes, apologetics, Arthur Eddington, atheism, Big Bang, Charles Bradlaugh, Daniel Dennett, Darwinism, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, Goldilocks Zone, Karl Popper, Lucretius, Melanie Phillips, natural preservation, natural selection, New Atheists, New Synthesis, randomness, Richard Dawkins, spontaneous generation, teleology, The Descent of Man, The Selfish Gene, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Malthus, Victorian period, Werner Heisenberg}

Richard Dawkins and the Law of Unintended Consequences

_{Neil Thomas
February 12, 2024

Biology, Chemistry, Evolution, Faith & Science

20}

The New Atheists’ failure to understand the nuanced way that “ordinary people” think was a profound strategic error. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 5, 2024

Categories
Ethics
Evolution
Faith & Science
History of Science
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, Adam and Eve, agency, Annie Besant, atheism, Charles Bradlaugh, Cicero, Connop Thirlwall, David Hanke, David Newsome, deduction, Enlightenment, evolution, fact, Garden of Eden, induction, intellectual history, intelligent design, James Henry Froude, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gribbin, Julian Huxley, metaphysics, Nancy Pearcey, natural selection, Old Testament, On the Origin of Species, Paul Davies, progress, Richard Dawkins, Roman Catholic, teleology, theology, Thomas Huxley, Tom Wolfe, Uncertainty Principle, vera causa, Victorian England, watchmaker, Werner Heisenberg, William Blake}

Darwinism as Fact? The Waning of an Historical Myth

_{Neil Thomas
January 5, 2024

Ethics, Evolution, Faith & Science, History of Science, Intelligent Design

20}

Historically the unfathomable subtleties of our terrestrial environment have been viewed as in and of themselves empirical markers for design. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 19, 2023

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, bacteria, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, creation, Darwinian theory, Darwinism, Denis Diderot, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Enlightenment, Erasmus Darwin, Erwin Schrödinger, giraffes, Homo sapiens, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Lamarckian theory, micromutations, natural preservation, natural selection, nature, Nick Lane, On the Origin of Species, quantum physics, Stanford University, teleology, theology, Thomas Huxley, University of Chicago Press, William Paley, William Shakespeare}

Darwinian Natural Selection: A Covert Theology of Nature?

_{Neil Thomas
June 19, 2023

Evolution, Faith & Science, Intelligent Design

18}

Those who interpreted the essence of Darwinism as being an explanation of evolution in (covertly) theistic terms appear to have had a point. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
March 7, 2023

Categories
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, D’Alembert’s Dream, Denis Diderot, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, history, Howard Glicksman, intelligent design, Jerry Fodor, John A. Moore, Julien Offray de la Mettrie, L’Homme Machine, Lamarckism, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, metaphors, Mother Nature, natural causes, natural selection, nature, On the Origin of Species, philosophes, Steve Laufmann, Steve Stewart-Williams, Thomas Malthus, transmutation, Victorians, world spirit}

Natural Selection: The Evolution of a Mirage

_{Neil Thomas
March 7, 2023

Evolution, Intelligent Design

19}

Natural selection reveals itself as not just a metaphor but a mixed one: Nature being dumb but nevertheless capable of discrimination. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
February 1, 2023

Categories
Evolution
Geology
Intelligent Design
Science
Tagged
, Anthropic Principle, argument from analogy, Barry Gale, biblical flood, Brandon Carter, Carl Sagan, category error, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Copernican principle, coral reefs, epiphenomenon, evolution, Frank Drake, gemmules, Georges Cuvier, Glen Roy, Goldilocks Zone, HMS Beagle, James Hutton, Louis Agassiz, Mendelian genetics, Natural Theology (book), On the Origin of Species, Principles of Geology, Robert Shedinger, Royal Society, Scotland, South America, Theory of the Earth, uniformitarianism, William Paley}

Darwin’s Category Errors and Their Consequences

_{Neil Thomas
February 1, 2023

Evolution, Geology, Intelligent Design, Science

15}

Charles Darwin indiscriminately lumped together the organic and inorganic spheres — a grand category error. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 19, 2023

Categories
Anatomy
Biology
Intelligent Design
Medicine
Science
Tagged
, abiogenesis, argument from incredulity, automation, autonomic nervous system, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, circulation, David Hume, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, heart, Howard Glicksman, innovation, intelligent design, Lucretius, Michael Denton, natural selection, Neo-Darwinism, Paul Davies, physiology, prosthetics, Steve Laufmann}

On the Miracles of Physiological Design

_{Neil Thomas
January 19, 2023

Anatomy, Biology, Intelligent Design, Medicine, Science

12}

The book under review is a splendid and uniquely well-informed contribution to the debate about what is by all indices a theory in possibly terminal crisis. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 16, 2023

Categories
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, abiogenesis, Alphonse de Candolle, Aristotle, atheism, atomism, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Christianity, complexification, David Hume, Edward Aveling, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, Friedrich Engels, Georges Cuvier, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Greece, Homo sapiens, Karl Marx, Law of Correlation, Lucretius, Matthew Arnold, Middle Ages, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, Patrick Matthew, Plato, Rome, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Malthus, transhumanism, Unmoved Mover, Victorian England, William Paley}

Old Wine in New Bottles: How Darwin Recruited Malthus to Fortify a Failed Idea from Antiquity

_{Neil Thomas
January 16, 2023

Evolution, Intelligent Design

16}

It was undoubtedly a tremendous philosophical coup for Darwin whose knowledge of formal philosophy was limited. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
November 9, 2022

Categories
Bioethics
Faith & Science
Philosophy
Tagged
, "survival of the fittest", Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Christianity, evolutionary processes, Higher Criticism, logic, nature, nihilism, On the Origin of Species, poetry, spirituality, Thomas Malthus, Victorian England, William Wordsworth, Wordsworth versus Darwin (series)}

William Wordsworth’s Posthumous Challenge to Darwinian Nihilism

_{Neil Thomas
November 9, 2022

Bioethics, Faith & Science, Philosophy

4}

Paradoxically, Wordsworth's theology may have formed a more effective counterforce to Darwin's ideas than Biblical orthodoxy itself. Read More ›